Following the reveal last month that Amir Haddad (known as Amir) would go on representing France at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, it was also announced that his single J’ai Cherché would be his official entry in Stockholm. Today they released the 3 minutes final version of the song.
It was announced last month that Amir would be the representative at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm. We also found out that J’ai Cherché would be his entry.
On March 2nd, his official music video for J’ai Cherché was revealed by France 2. However, the song was already over 3:30 minutes long, and since as early as the 1950s, the EBU had a rule that songs performed at the Eurovision Song Contest must be 3 minutes maximum. Therefor it was expected for Amir to release a new version of his song that was shorten to fit that requirement.
Today, the new version was released on the official Eurovision YouTube account. As you can see below, the video itself hasn’t changed, but the audio has a few differences:
The introduction is clearly different going straight into the first verse rather than start with the usual “youuuu”. Midway through the song, a section in French used as a pre-chorus was removed after the second verse to go straight into the main chorus. At that point the music switches slightly giving more attention to the build up to the second part of the chorus. Finally, the last minutes or so had ad libs changed quite a lot.
Check out the final version of J’ai Cherché below:
The Dicaire Show
Yesterday was originally intended to be the time when France reveal Amir a their representative and present the song for the first time during The Dicaire Show.
Amir still performed on the show his song (the old version, not the new shorter one). You can check it out by clicking here.
The host of the show, Véronic Dicaire is a French Canadian imitator who’s been imitating artists for years including Céline Dion. In 2011 she joined the X Factor in France as a judge and in 2013, she even got her show Voices in Las Vegas.
Last night, she did a rendition of three Eurovision classics: France Gall’s Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son (Luxembourg 1965), Marie Myriam’s L’Oiseau Et L’Enfant (France 1977) and finally Céline Dion’s Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi (Switzerland 1988). You can watch it below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmA7UvccFAk
France at the Eurovision Song Contest
France is one of the founding countries at Eurovision as they first took part back in 1956. The earlier years were very successful for France as they won in 1958, 1960 and 1962.
In 1969, they were one of four countries to win the contest as Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom all reached the amount of points as France. The victory was given to all four competing countries, however rules were changed the following year to prevent such a situation.
France’s last win was back in 1977 when Marie Myriam took the victory in London with her song L’Oiseau Et L’Enfant.
Check out our highlights of 2011-2015 at the Eurovision Song Contest below:
